Every year, millions of animals suffer behind closed laboratory doors while the public remains largely in the dark. According to the US Department of Agriculture, more than 775,000 animals covered by the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) were used in laboratories in fiscal year 2024. But shockingly, this is only a tiny percentage of the total number of animals used in experiments.
The AWA covers dogs, cats, primates, rabbits, and other warm-blooded species, but it excludes the animals most used in labs—rats, mice, fish, and birds bred for research. In a 2021 Scientific Reports article, laboratory animal veterinarian Larry Carbone estimated that rats and mice comprise over 99 percent of animals used in US research institutions. For animals not covered by the AWA, these numbers are not required to be publicly reported, so there is little transparency about their suffering.
The bipartisan Federal Animal Research Accountability Act would help expose the pain and distress these animals are forced to endure in laboratories.
This important legislation would require facilities that receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (the largest funder of biomedical research in the world) to publicly report the following:
• the number of animals used, housed, and bred each year
• animal pain and distress levels
• anesthesia and pain relief administered
The information would be available in a public database, offering long-overdue transparency in US biomedical research. This would empower the public to fully understand the cruelty of the animal experimentations funded with billions of taxpayer dollars annually. Better reporting will help ensure that researchers consider alternatives to painful animal experiments—and finally show taxpayers how animals are being used in federally funded research.
Please contact your representative today and urge them to support the Federal Animal Research Accountability Act!
